Ohad Ashkenazi

When I was in primary school, the 6th grade class mounted a musical every year, and the whole class was made to audition for parts. While I didn't get the lead role, the music teacher was so impressed with my singing that she wrote in a solo for me - being nurtured when I was that young set me on my theater path.

I was always a songwriter (writing mainly pop/rnb songs), but taking musical theater writing classes in school re-ignited my passion for musical theater. Unlike songwriting, when you're writing to advance a storyline, there certainly are right or wrong answers, and boiling emotions and plot points down to musical parameters is a very fun puzzle to solve.

My guiding motto is "content dictates form" - so I'm glad to say the styles I write in, the vocabulary I use in my lyrics, the rhyme scheme, even the instrumentation I choose when I arrange my songs are all informed by the content of the story and the context it's told in - Where are we? What time period are we in? Who are the characters? How old are they? Are they educated? Articulate? Guarded? The answers to all my musical questions lie in this information.

Being able to take an idea that only existed in my head and to transform it into a tangible product that other people can hear and experience is very cool to me!